Engaging
the Enemy
Elizabeth Moon
Del Rey Books, March 2006
ISBN 0-345-44756-5
Review by Melanie Fletcher.
Elizabeth Moon is known for her deft, intelligent stories of military women, from Paks of the Deed of Paksenarrion trilogy to Heris Serrano and Esme Suiza of the Familias Regnant series. Engaging the Enemy, the third installation in Moon's Vatta's War series, continues the trend with Ky Vatta, disgraced military cadet and reluctant recruit into her family's shipping business. When a murderous attack on her family shatters the Vatta empire, Ky turns to privateering in order to track down her parents' killers and rebuild Vatta Trading (with the help of her remaining family members).
In Engaging the Enemy, Ky discovers that the attack on her family was part of a massive criminal conspiracy designed to conquer the galaxy's settled worlds. In order to bring the mastermind to justice, she must now convince other privateers to band together in the galaxy's first united space force against a well-armed and vicious pirate fleet. Unfortunately for Ky, her own command of a ship recaptured from her piratical (and now dead) relative Osman Vatta generates suspicion in the very people she's trying to defend.
Ky also faces battles in her own family, clashing with her smart, sexy cousin Stella over the future of Vatta Trading versus Ky's plans for a space force. To make matters worse, Ky's identity is thrown into doubt by a ship captain from her own company, leading Stella to wonder about her cousin's true intentions. While Ky fights to establish her identity and forge a band of independent privateers into a cohesive fighting unit, things are brewing on the Vatta homeworld; "batty old aunt" Gracie Lane Vatta turns out to be a hardnosed resistance fighter with hacking skills, and promptly declares war on her own government for facilitating the attack on Vatta Trading.
Moon, as always, is a stickler for hard facts and believable technology. Not only are the celestial mechanics of her space battles rigorously accurate, but her communication and scanning devices also have realistic lag times and data blurs; no perfect Star Trek pseudotech here. Her meticulousness extends to everyday activities, as well; trading ships must be reprovisioned (a wonderful scene with a chandler explains where shipboard dinnerware comes from), cargos must be picked up and dropped off, and bank accounts opened on various stations to process the income from trade and profit. Other elements of intergalactic trading and warfare are explored in gritty detail, and a unique space station that prides itself on extreme courtesy (enforced by draconian punishment) combines the politeness of Canada with the tender mercies of a South American dictatorship.
Of the characters, Gracie Lane Vatta is the stand-out here, an elderly female character who smashes the stereotypical mold and starts kicking ass and taking names when her family is murdered; think Xena in her golden years, and you have a good idea of Grace Vatta. This shouldn't be a surprise, as Moon is known for writing competent, compelling older female characters (Lady Cecilia in the Familias Regnant series, Ser Ofelia in Remnant Population), but in Gracie she's created the ideal grandmother/warrior, strongly reminiscent of Larry Niven's Protectors.
Fans of Moon's earlier works won't be disappointed — Engaging the Enemy is an enjoyable blend of hard SF, strong female characters and a romping good political thriller — and new readers will quickly find themselves caught up in Ky Vatta's war.
